


It's Only A Bargain If You Want It

by lovetincture



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hate Sex, Idiots in Love, M/M, Murder Husbands, Porn with Feelings, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Finale, Post-Season/Series 03, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 22:10:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19186369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Needing someone isn’t the same as loving them, and loving someone isn’t the same as liking them. Will and Hannibal love each other with a dozen small cruelties, stumbling their way toward something approaching peace.There's a lot of sex involved.





	It's Only A Bargain If You Want It

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from a song by the same name, ["It's Only A Bargain If You Want It" by Des Ark](https://vimeo.com/39720512).

In retrospect, he should have seen this coming. Falling off a cliff was not an auspicious beginning.

Hannibal thought he’d reached the limits of how Will could surprise him, but he was not expecting a murder-suicide attempt. The fall was as delicious as it was terrible.

He dragged them both out of the ocean dripping water and blood before he passed out. When he woke up, they were in the ruins of the cliff house, so Will must have dragged them both the rest of the way. Their second team effort. Hannibal smiled, although it ended on a grimace. His side burned, and his grip on consciousness was tenuous at best. The edges of his vision blurred and darkened. He had lost a lot of blood.

He looked around blearily. Broken glass was sprayed everywhere, and the bottle of wine from last night had thoroughly soaked into the carpet. Will was standing over him with a knife, and for a moment Hannibal expected him to finish what he’d started. He kept his eyes open because he wanted to see what it looked like when Will was killing him.

But Will only cut away the edges of his ruined sweater, the better to pull a bullet from his side, so that was one piece of curiosity that was not to be indulged today.

Hannibal sat up with a groan. He coached Will through removing a bullet and closing a wound. Will nodded, working silently, and followed his instructions to the letter. When he was done, the stitches were messy and inexpert, but wholly serviceable.

He didn’t ask why Will had taken them over the side of the cliff or why Will had saved him after all, and Will didn’t offer any answers.

* * *

"Just so we're clear, what happens if I try to leave?" Will asked one day.

Hannibal was in the kitchen chopping herbs from the garden for dinner. The smell of cilantro and mint wafted pungent and sharp when the wind blew through the open veranda door. He paused, blade hovering above the cutting board, before he set it down and wiped his hands on the kitchen towel near to hand.

They hadn’t spoken to each other in several hours, indulging instead in the quiet companionship of sharing space that had become the new norm.

"You wouldn't," Hannibal said, sounding surer than he felt with the sensation of something crawling up his throat.

"I wouldn't," Will admitted. "But supposing I did. Indulge me for clarity's sake."

Hannibal picked up his knife and resumed chopping, rocking the blade over the fragrant greens. "I would kill your family."

Will gave a short, sharp bark of laughter that sounded like broken glass. "I don't have a family."

"But you'd feel responsible for their deaths."

Will swallowed and looked away, and Hannibal watched, tracing the bob of his throat with an adoring gaze.

Will looked back at him, and his demeanor had changed in an instant. Where before he’d reminded Hannibal of the reluctant profiler he’d met in Jack’s office centuries ago, now he radiated preternatural calm, as though he'd shed his nervousness like snake sheds its skin.

"If you leave, you'll never find me again," Will said, holding his gaze. "I promise you that. I'll make sure if it."

Hannibal felt something like the beginnings of fear prickle along his spine at the unwanted, unpleasantly vivid thought of a life that no longer included Will Graham, not even the opportunity to see his face.

“I would hunt you down.”

“I know you too well to let you find me,” Will countered. “You’re in my head now.”

"Then I would make sure you could never forget me. You could never look at a newspaper or turn on a television without seeing the carnage I would wreak in your absence."

"And you would never get to see the look on my face when I did," Will said.

"It's a good thing neither of us are going anywhere,” Hannibal said finally, one part challenge and one part painfully transparent bid for reassurance.

"Good thing."

Hannibal thought, not for the first time, how wholly and absurdly he loved this man.

* * *

Hannibal had expected the combination of his gender and Will’s sexuality to be more of a sticking point. In the end, it turned out not to matter at all. It was a footnote at the end of their saga, and not a particularly interesting one at that.

The first night they were both well enough to do so—after they’d removed one another’s stitches and Hannibal’s infection had passed, once Will’s cheek no longer offered an additional unwanted entrance to his body—Will pressed him up against the stained wall in their rented motel room. He fastened his lips to Hannibal’s neck, licking and biting and sucking at the pulse there until he drew a groan from Hannibal’s mouth.

Hannibal distantly wondered if Will might draw blood, and the thought sparked something like glee in him.

Will had caught him off guard, but Hannibal recovered from the shock fast enough. Soon enough to give as good as he got. He brought one hand up to feel the broad lines of Will’s back while he used the other to hold Will’s head in place, stroking through loose curls and crushing them beneath his fingers.

Will tipped his head up for a kiss when Hannibal tugged, and they got their hands down each other’s pants without further preamble. It was sweaty and inelegant. Will gripped him too tight, dragged his dry palm against Hannibal’s cock in a caress that he couldn’t easily categorize as owing to pain or pleasure.

No matter. It’s was Will’s hand on him—Will’s hands on every inch of him, pushing and stroking and seeking—and that was all that mattered.

They left a trail of ripped and rumpled clothes on the way to the bed and drew animal sounds from each other in a flurry of clacking teeth and dueling tongues.

If Will was put off by the realities of becoming intimate with another man’s body, another man’s penis and skin and sweat, he didn’t show it. Hannibal asked once if he was the first, in a fit of jealousy disguised as vanity, and Will just stared at him blankly until he looked away.

He wondered what it would feel like to skin every person who had ever touched Will Graham.

* * *

Hannibal went hunting once, if only to prove that he still had teeth. That he wasn’t one of the housebroken dogs that Will insisted on collecting, no matter where they ended up. That he wasn’t _safe._

He had the man tied to a chair, writhing and pleading as Hannibal cut into him with no small amount of boredom. For once he was glad that they lived so far in the country—a concession to Will and his preference for being away from metropolitan hubs that Hannibal mostly tolerated but did not enjoy. Here, his prey could scream and beg as much as he liked, and there would be no neighbors to telephone the police out of concern. There was no one around for miles.

Will came home from wherever he’d gone—he never told Hannibal where he went when he left the house, sometimes for days at a stretch. Never so long that Hannibal actually left to hunt him down, but certainly long enough that he _thought_ about it.

It had been a run this time. Hannibal could smell it before he saw Will, the scent of trampled grass and sweat. He heard the sounds of Will puttering in the kitchen, opening the cupboard to take a glass and fill it at the tap, slow and unhurried despite the whimpers of the man bleeding out in the living room.

At last, he rounded the corner and came to find Hannibal. His feet crunched the plastic tarpaulin underfoot as he came to lean against the doorframe, careful to avoid the puddles of wet red blood. He cocked an eyebrow and took a slow, deliberate drink of water from the glass still in his hand.

Hannibal looked at Will, making sure he watched as he peeled the man’s chest open, snapping his ribs back and excising the lungs. The man’s screams gave way to wet burbles as his source of air was removed, and blood bubbled warm and wet from the cavity of his chest.

When the man stopped moving at last, legs twitching and writhing and slick with gore, Will laughed. He laughed loud and long, and he heaved himself up from the wall with a groan.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said without sparing Hannibal or the mess he’d made a second glance.

Hannibal clenched his fist around the lungs so tight he bruised the meat. He sliced it thin and pan-fried it in butter and garlic that night. Will yawned and complimented his cooking, damning it with faint praise.

* * *

“Why don’t you just kill me?” Hannibal asked one night.

It was so dark he couldn’t see Will’s mouth move as he spoke. They’d both had too much wine to drink. Even so he could feel Will’s eyes boring a hole into him, attention so focused it was like a physical presence.

“You know why,” he said.

He rolled over to the far side of the bed so that no part of his body touched Hannibal’s, even by accident.

* * *

Before, he’d thought that Will’s failure to perceive the truth of his love—Will rejecting his love outright—was the worst pain he could feel. But now that they belong to each other so utterly, Will has learned new and inventive ways to hurt him, wielding careless, small cruelties with the precision of a surgeon with a knife.

“Are you happy now that you've won?” Will asked him while they were lying in bed on a mild afternoon, sated and spent

“I don't know,” Hannibal said honestly. His honesty was often rewarded with pain, but it still gave him a sick thrill to share it with Will. Even if Will took all the little parts of his love and crunched its bones between his sharp teeth, there would always be something in Hannibal that wanted to press closer to the killing knife. To offer himself up as a sacrifice to this bored and angry god.

“You destroy me.” He pulled Will in for a searing kiss, tracing the shape of his lips after he’d pulled back. “Keep doing it forever.”

“Let the teacup stay broken?” Will asked with a small quirk of his lips and a gentle tug of Hannibal’s hair.

“Just so.”

* * *

He tried to cut himself free once.

He’d had enough of Will’s mocking smile, enough of the life they’d built that was everything he’d wanted and still not enough.

It wasn’t a moment of passion; Hannibal planned it thoroughly. He looked through every antique shop and estate sale until he found a knife worthy of his other half. It was curved in an echo of the linoleum knife he’d used to gut Will once upon a time. Its handle was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and it looked like nothing so much as the moon. It was beautiful.

Hannibal waited until Will was asleep one night, asleep in their bed, and that alone spoke volumes of how much Will had changed him, blunted him, worn him down until he was something _safe._ Someone to sleep beside with bared throat and closed eyes.

Hannibal looked over. He marked his place in _Steppenwolf_ with a bookmark Will had given him for Christmas. He set the book aside and fetched the knife.

On silent, stockinged feet, he walked around to Will’s side of the bed. Will woke with Hannibal’s knees pressed to either side of his chest, pinning his arms. He woke to Hannibal’s carefully honed blade pressed against his throat. Hannibal saw recognition come to Will’s eyes as fast as thought, as the haze of sleep receded and he took stock of where he was and what was happening. Even in this, Hannibal couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride for how far Will had come.

He didn’t fight or struggle, just tipped his head back on the pillow to bare his neck for Hannibal’s knife. Hannibal played his part. He pressed, hard enough to draw a line of blood that trickled lazily down to soak into the collar of Will’s shirt.

Will watched him, curious and unmoved, as though Hannibal were telling him a particularly interesting story.

Hannibal pressed harder still, then stopped. He closed his eyes. He cursed and threw the knife across the room, where it clattered into the wall and stained the carpet.

And then Will was surging upward, twining his arms around Hannibal, capturing his mouth in a kiss. He maneuvered them so Hannibal was beneath him and he was sitting astride, and he kissed his way down Hannibal’s body, raining kisses on his face, his chest, his thighs. He nuzzled his face into the greying hairs nestled around Hannibal’s cock. He inhaled and mouthed at Hannibal’s burgeoning erection that was only too happy to oblige.

Hannibal looked away and closed his eyes, and was immediately brought back to attention by a sharp nip against the inside of a thigh. Will wanted him to watch. He dragged his eyes helplessly back to Will’s, and the eye contact was searing as Will swallowed him down.

Will set a slow pace, tortuously so, holding Hannibal’s hips down with firm hands as he brought him leisurely to the edge, licking and sucking and bringing the whole of his terrible gifts to bear on Hannibal. He watched, dispassionate, as Hannibal shook apart beneath him.

He moved his mouth lower, keeping Hannibal’s cock occupied with clever hands while he sought out Hannibal’s hole. He pressed his tongue into it, and Hannibal groaned. He fingered and licked with abandon, drawing out the pleasure until Hannibal was babbling and incoherent with it. Until his hair was plastered to his head with sweat, and he was murmuring endearments in the mothertongue he’d long since consigned to the halls of memory.

“My heart, my life,” Hannibal whispered in Lithuanian. “My only love.”

He came with a sob.

When he finished, Will climbed back up his body to press a tender, lingering kiss against his lips. His eyes were cold and dark, so empty that it made Hannibal shiver. He didn’t let Hannibal touch him at all that night.

Hannibal shuddered to think what he had wrought. Empathy unfettered with kindness was a terrible thing.

* * *

Sometimes, in his better moods, Hannibal appreciated the irony of it.

He didn’t love Will any less when his casual cruelty was turned on him. It didn’t escape him that he probably should, but therein lay the great tragedy of the two of them. They would love each other to death, if possible.

* * *

“I hate you,” Will gritted out.

Really, there were better times to be having this conversation. But Will always picked the most difficult way to do anything, so they were having it out while Hannibal was buried to the hilt in Will’s body. He stilled himself, ignoring the way every instinct and nerve ending in his body begged him to thrust.

“You don’t,” Hannibal said after a moment.

Will pressed back onto his cock, wriggling his hips in a kind of figure-eight movement that eroded the edges of Hannibal’s restraint. He rocked his own hips forward, just a little. Enough to make Will toss his head back, eyes slitted with pleasure as he groaned.

It should be as impossible for anyone to look as lovely as Will did in that moment, and Hannibal told him so.

“Shut up,” Will said, forming the words around a long, drawn out moan as Hannibal brushed something deep inside him with another minute thrust, panting as Hannibal did it again. “Shut up and fuck me.”

Hannibal obliged.

* * *

If it was impossible to love someone perfectly for a lifetime, then it was impossible to hate them that way as well.

The thought gave Hannibal a considerable amount of solace. There were times when Will’s single-minded distaste for him faltered, times when he spoke to Hannibal as an equal, when he considered his opinions and preferences, when they laughed together, honest and unfettered. Hannibal could only hope, as time wore on, that those moments would grow more frequent until they blotted out everything that came before.

Even someone as steadfast as Will Graham could not hate perfectly.

* * *

"You're not going to ask me to stop killing?" Hannibal asked. His face was deceptively calm, giving away nothing.

"Would you, if I did?"

"There's only one way to find out," Hannibal said reasonably.

Will shook his head. "I'd rather not be disappointed."

He tried distracting Hannibal with a kiss, intent plainly transparent, and Hannibal allowed it.

"You won't ask because you don't want me to stop," Hannibal whispered in his ear, bending his head to suck on the part of Will’s neck that made him moan. "But I won't tell anyone. It can be our secret."

He didn't miss the little shudder that ran through Will at that. Neither one of them mentioned that there was no one left to tell—no one that mattered but each other.

* * *

There came a day when they didn’t fight.

When Will didn’t needle him, didn’t hide barbs in every glance and touch and word, just to prove that he still could. When Hannibal didn’t torment him with victims in retribution.

They went on holiday to Spain, and Will let Hannibal show him his favorite beach house. They swam and basked in the sun until their skin was tanned and salt-crusted. They ate oysters and drank ice cold beer that slaked their dry throats. Even after the sun went down, it was warm enough that neither of them bothered putting on a shirt. The beach was private enough, and there was not a soul in sight.

Will slung his arm around Hannibal’s shoulder, and Hannibal could feel the warmth emanating from his skin, as though Will Graham was a sun all to himself. They watched the last dying rays of the sun, and it was perhaps the most perfect day Hannibal could ever remember.

Will sighed and leaned into him, pressing his head into Hannibal’s chest. They were careless and easy in their affections these days. When Hannibal brought a hand up to stroke through Will’s hair, he didn’t flinch away from the touch but leaned into it like one of the dogs he’d kept back in Virginia.

Will sat up to take another long pull of beer before settling back against Hannibal.

“We’re going to make each other miserable for the rest of our lives, aren’t we?” Will asked in a voice that spoke of bone-deep contentment.

Hannibal could have pointed out that he was doing everything in his power to _not_ make Will miserable. He could have said ‘ _We have the choice to make each other happy instead.’_ Could have, and had done so, on many other occasions. Will knew where he stood on the matter. Where he’d always stand.

“Yes,” he said instead. “I expect we will.”

“Good,” said Will.

They watched the moon rise together.

**Author's Note:**

> You can check out my [original writing here](https://hopezane.com) if you're interested.
> 
> [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture) | [Tumblr](http://lovetincture.tumblr.com) | [Dreamwidth](http://lovetincture.dreamwidth.org)


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